The Geopolitical Problem of the US—a German-Russo-Japanese Connection

The Germano-Russo-Japanese Energy Alliance 

The possibility of the Alternative For Deutschland Party defeating Olaf Scholz and the Social Democratic Party, and for them to subsequently repair and open the Nord Stream pipelines so Germany can purchase Russian Natural Gas is growing by the day.

The fundamental geopolitical problem of the United States is to prevent its two key allies, Germany and Japan, from purchasing cheaper Russian oil and natural gas. Delivered by pipeline, that cheap gas would make Germany and Japan’s heavy industries increasingly competitive globally. This would compel the secondary and tertiary industrial power centers in their regional orbit to follow suit.

The reason Germany is more important than Japan in this sense is that the German World consists of Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Austria, all of which share borders with Germany on the Danube River. If the German oil and gas pipeline network is connected to Russia by any pipeline, then it could not only supply all of the German World, but the entire Slavic World along the Danube River.

Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg to the West would be sure to follow suit, as the Groningen gas field was scheduled to be shut down due to ground tremors associated with natural gas extraction. The BENELUX countries have been connected to the German pipeline network for decades.

If Germany were to repair and open Nord Stream, it is conceivable that more than a dozen countries could join a Russo-German natural gas market, paying directly in rubles and jettisoning the petrodollar. In this scenario, other countries in the German world could pay Germany in Euros, and Germany could then pay Russia in rubles. The external drop in the demand for the US Dollar would likely internalize inflation inside the US (as mentioned in previous papers of this series).

Petrodollar Primacy and the Long March Towards Globalism

Should Germany exit the petrodollar financial system that supports the US’s burgeoning $34 trillion national debt, not only would it imperil debt support, but it would effectively end the NATO alliance. The purpose of NATO is to (a) keep the US in Europe, (b) keep Germany down in Europe, and (c) keep Russia out of Europe. A Russo-German pipeline network reverses all of that overnight.

To emphasize Gerhard Shroder’s Nord Stream project implied a massive shifting of the global geopolitical alliances the nullification of NATO, and the end of the petrodollar trading scheme—all in one fell swoop. As Seymour Hersh reported in February 2023, Nord Stream was purposely sabotaged, ostensibly by Western allies.

The Russo-German natural gas pipeline alliance would have rapidly shifted the global center of gravity from Washington and London to Berlin and Moscow. As the Wolfowitz Doctrine of 1992 revealed, power sharing is not part of the Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan, and Bill Krystol-inspired US-as-sole-superpower strategic goal in the long march towards neoconservative-controlled globalism.

The more one understands how the Russian natural gas pipeline advantage works in conjunction with both the post-Mahan and post-Mackinder geopolitical theories, as well as the post-Clausewitz and Bismark DIME integration (Diplomatic, Infrastructural, Military and Economic instrument of national power explained in a previous article), the more people will understand why the US is feverishly trying to block all Russian and Chinese infrastructure integration projects around Eurasia, with Nord Stream being among the most critical projects to halt. Outside intelligence agencies, only a handful of university graduate students are ever exposed to these strategies.

US Counter-strategy: Radicalizing Mackinder

This form of geopolitical modeling makes it easier to understand US foreign policy following the collapse of the Soviet Union: Simply put, the US counter-strategy is to block all logistical supply routes emanating from Russia from coastal rimland industrial power centers across Eurasia.

The US counter-strategy to the westward expansion of Russian oil and gas can be summed up in three aspects: First, the immediate expansion of the European Economic Council (EEC) and European Union eastward as a cover to expand both the Office of Security Cooperation Europe (OSCE) and NATO to surround the pipelines emanating from Russia through Belarus; Secondly, to move the EU and NATO into Romania to regulate Russian access to its Slavic allies in the Balkans via the Danube River; and thirdly, to move into Georgia to control the Caspian Sea oil and gas fields via the South Caucasus.

By controlling Georgia and Armenia, the US can control Azerbaijan’s ability to transit oil and gas via pipeline to the Black Sea, and onward to Bulgaria by an undersea pipeline, which was outlined in Fiona Hill’s 2004 article published by Brookings Institute. The three-part plan to envelop Belarus and Russia to take control of all of the oil and natural gas pipelines was more or less relegated to certain circles, particularly Robert Kagan’s—the husband of Victoria Nuland and brother of Frederick Kagan.

Frederick Kagan taught at West Point and is married to Kimberly Kagan, who along with Bill Krystol reconstituted the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) into the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). The ISW employs retired Generals Jack Keen and David Petraeus. The Kagans, Bushes, and Dick Cheney all have the Yale Grand Strategies seminars in common.

General Wesley Clark’s 2007 presidential campaign platform was based on the idea that US foreign policy was “hijacked” by a relative few. Those few were pursuing regime change-nation-building and regime change-destabilization strategies that were not widely known, let alone debated, in any of the democratic processes. Since journalists are unaware of these aspects of International Relations and International Political Economy curricula, the media does not even know this subject matter exists and therefore does not know how to discuss or scrutinize it.

The problem is that the sea power-versus-land power strategies determine US foreign policy and yet are the best-kept open secrets on the planet. People can buy the books used in these curricula for peanuts, but few master these disciplines instead of intellectual charlatanism. Clark argued that the foreign policy decision path was never discussed in the open and was barely known outside of certain small circles. The critique of retired General Clark’s campaign speeches is that he neither defined the geopolitical strategies nor enlarged the decision-making circle to get past the Democratic primaries. If the US is a democracy, it is time to bring the geopolitical Grand Strategies to the general population for democratic debate. That is, to a large degree, the impetus behind this series.